


all things under heaven

by kalimero



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 12:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18756136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalimero/pseuds/kalimero
Summary: They trek through the wilderness in search of the New World.





	all things under heaven

— 

_sometimes at night i would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. i was alive then._

**albert camus** , return to tipasa

**—**

 

They are both panting heavily by the time they reach the top. Thomas is further ahead, climbing the rocky hill with graceful, agile strides, never misplacing a foot, while James, from behind, admires the taut muscles of his back and the way his shoulder blades move, outlined by the sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his skin. What was once an impeccable ivory fabric has long since been torn by branches and painted with mud.

“Are you coming?” Thomas eventually shouts without even so much as looking back, the smile apparent in his voice. He takes the last steps and turns around and while James is too far away to be sure, he would swear on the Walrus – may God rest her soul – that Thomas’ eyes are glinting cheerfully.

In lieu of an answer, James merely grumbles and trudges on, his face contorted with open disapproval at the mockery. Yes, he may not be that young and sprightly anymore but he is still at an age where commanding officers can join the front line to rally the troops and survive the ensuing battle, thank you very much. It is true that in the last three years, since their reunion, he has become somewhat complacent but he realizes that that is a sign of fatigue. He has fought, he has bled, that was his life force. It took a while for him to let go of his rage against the world that drove him to this point. His hands stilled, his heart beat slowed. The rage remained. But he found a different purpose, a better purpose, reborn from his faded memory to shine brighter than ever before. Only something that was once lost can truly be treasured.

“Look at this,” Thomas sighs softly when James draws near, and points towards the horizon. James follows his line of sight. The air is hot and heavy, suffocating them with rain that is yet to fall. Before them lies a nature as raw and immediate as it must have been upon creation. There might be humans living hereabouts but they have not crossed paths with them so far. All they see is a green valley, nestled between barren hillsides, stretching until it tapers into woodland in the distance. Further than that, far away, a storm is gathering. Soon, the animals of these parts will have to seek refuge. But not yet. Birds are singing. The trees are alive. If there is a sense of silence, then it rests in the absence of men.

“This could have been a city once,” Thomas says with a strange tone in his voice, both reverent and reproachful, and James turns to him with furrowed brows and narrowed eyes, not quite discerning his meaning. Thomas catches his expression and huffs bashfully before taking a breath and steeling his face. In the past, he might have smiled and ducked his head, not because he was not as serious as he is now about things he cares about but because he felt them more like a scholar would. That has changed. A touch of acrimony has entered his mind and James would like to know what it was that made him so. It is not quite a call for revenge. No, it is significantly milder than anything James has championed. The mark of Thomas being the better man, perhaps. But it exists. A frustration. A defeat. A hint. James cannot be sure.

“A few years ago, I read something curious. A report by a Spanish priest who had travelled these lands long before we came here. He said that there was no wilderness in the Americas when the settlers first arrived. Not like this. He said that there were natives living… everywhere, really. And they had agriculture. They had buildings. Then came the _conquistadores_ and with them, death. And we came, and with us, death. And the missionaries came and wrote about it. They, of course, brought faith to the infidels that survived the devastation. But where they did not, and where we did not stay, nature reclaimed the ruins, growing over them, swallowing the stone and mortar until some claimed that they had never existed at all. These days, one could arrive at these shores and believe they were setting foot on a ground that has not been touched by civilization, only by God. That was how Columbus felt when he landed on the Bahamas. He thought he had found paradise.”

Thomas looks at James pointedly before training his eyes on the horizon again. James opens his mouth slightly as if to reply but then he refrains. The corners of his eyes crinkle in thought. The heat is growing oppressive, the light dark. Thunder rolls. They can barely hear it but there is a reverberation in the air, a tremor of the shaking sky. The song of the birds is growing quiet. Thomas takes a heaving breath and there is that edge in his voice again that was not there before and finally James realizes that it is the sound of someone no longer willing to forgive. When Thomas speaks, it is a sober statement on the surface but beneath it lies something else.

A judgment. A sense of pain that only someone can share who has suffered a great injustice.

Condemnation.

“The truth is that we killed them.”

They stare at the land before them, wild and strange, inviting and frightening, full of forces beyond control. On the horizon, a wall of clouds is pushing over and into the sky, layer upon layer, grey and deeper and dipped in purple, blurring into threads of rain that cannot be picked apart; as if a painter took a wet brush and dragged it across a canvas glowing with the orange of an early sunset. It is a monumental sight: The final crescendo of a panorama that grows in magnitude the further it reaches out and away.

There is no justice on this Earth. And yet, here they both are, together.

James clears his throat. Once upon a time he would have been embarrassed by what he is about to say. He would have been embarrassed to appear as if he were trying his best to seem erudite. He would have been mocked for the blatant attempt to rise above his station, regardless of intent. But there is nothing to be embarrassed about anymore. No shame over who he is. Only what he has done; what he had become and un-become. But that lies in a past they do not speak about.

“All hope excluded thus, behold instead,” he intones, “of us out-cast, exil'd, his new delight, mankind created, and for him this world.”

Even when they were separated by oceans, even when both believed the other to be dead, even when they were drifting apart from themselves and all they had ever known to be good and true, they shared something, as they discovered upon their reunion.

In all those years, they had both read the same books.

Thomas sighs beside him. There is no need for an explanation. This land is not abandoned and neither are they. It is waiting. And they are living. That should be enough.

While they witness the thunderstorm in the distance and yearn for its release, having last refilled their bottles in a stream hours ago and since then depleted the water, they feel the weight of this promise – that is, their existence – and it lifts only when their fingers brush against each other.

They watch in silence as the storm unfolds, their hands entwined.


End file.
